A real man does not eat ready meals. A real man knows how to mix the perfect Negroni. A real man always carries his passport. You know, just in case. A real man owns, minimum, two pairs of driving gloves. A real man can do the dishes without pointing out that he's just done the dishes. A real man can shuck an oyster with little more than a toothpick and a stick of gum. A real man can wear white jeans to a wedding in Gloucestershire in April. A real man reads Karl Ove Knausgaard. And food labels. A real man asks for salad rather than fries...

Men are the problem

GQ freelance political writer

20 Oct 2016

This isn't going to be that kind of a piece. Let's face it, this "real man" isn't any "realer" than David Gandy manspreading in a fishing boat off the coast of Sicily. In the endless rebranding of man, this "real man" is yet another ideological archetype, a man-ad used to sell nuances of our own masculinity back to us as a neatly packaged lifestyle choice. Real man as an ice-cold beer. Real man as a five-bladed razor with a "FlexBall" and lubrication strip. Real man as "Gary, you are so Moneysupermarket". Real man as yet another media neologism.

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Lad, new man, metrosexual, retrosexual, ubersexual, spornosexual, pomosexual, 4-D man, default man, himbos, man zero, nouveau bro - have you actually met any of these morons? Are they helping you win the custody battle with your ex-wife, talk to your son about body image or ensure you don't die from drinking your own weight in Ott rosé everyday while on holiday? Real man is no more real than your boss is James Bond because he dropped half his salary on an Aston Martin DB11. Or £30 on a perfume. Real man is a fugazi. He's fairy dust. He's a fake.

The discourse among women and their demands for equality has, rightly, led men to ponder afresh our own place in this brave new world. Are men in 2016 confused or just over it? Do we want it all - the career, the family, the baby puke down our backs - or just the casual sex and stacks of money? Are men in 2016 some newly formed, over-ambitious, athleisure-wearing, protein shake-supping, baby-cradling, courgette-spiralising vessels of whey-amped philanthropy? Or are we more like Daddy Pig, someone who quite likes shepherd's pie, Game Of Thrones and a hand job on their birthday?

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ByKathleen Johnston

Well, I haven't a clue. Nor has anyone else. But it is time for some honesty. A little self-prescribed mansplaining. This feature was an idea born, like all the best ideas, out of a conversation with a woman. About a month ago I was at lunch with journalist, author and unofficial spokesperson for new feminism Caitlin Moran. I listened as she explained how she woke up one day, looked out of the window at the world her two teenage daughters were growing up in and was utterly terrified.

Moran decided to do something about it. She decided to write a book, How To Be A Woman. She wanted to help build a world where young women don't think that a 23-year-old with genitalia as smooth and as hairless as chamois leather is the norm. (It's not, by the way, not even for a guy.) Or a world where "rape" is an actual category on some pornography sites. A world where if a man wants to ejaculate over a woman's face at the end of having sex then the woman shouldn't simply be expected to offer up her open mouth like a gasping fish on the deck of a Cornish trawler. Moran dared to ask, "Is a little respect and equality too much to ask?" Oh, and she was funny about it to boot.

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Towards the end of our conversation Moran and I both wondered out loud, "So why isn't there a 'How To Be A Man'?" It's a question I couldn't answer. When it comes to many things - not just how to tie a bow tie, or put up a shelf, or be more like Tom Hiddleston, although these are all worthy ambitions to sharpen - who is looking men in the eye and talking to them about, say, the walnut sized lump in our left testicle?

Who is talking to your 16-year-old son about loneliness? About real sex rather than Pornhub sex? The Lad Bible? Dapper Laughs? Who is talking to men about why David Beckham is not actually a real person - not the Beckham we read about in the Daily Mail anyway - and certainly not someone to emulate? Who is talking about how being too much of a good father can actually be a bad thing for your mollycoddled kids? About a man's inner rage? About why men are almost four times more likely to kill themselves than women?

Quite honestly, no one is talking to young men in the way that many young women have begun talking to one another recently. And no, it's not Beyoncé's fault. We're way behind on this one, yet the need to deep dive into our own masculinity - who we are, what it means and how we should treat one another - in a candid, honest, point-and-laugh-at-the-lunacy-of-it-all sort of a way has never been more urgent. So here is it is. Let's call it a "starter for men". Think of it as an opening gambit rather than full disclosure. Read on, say, "Ahhhh", puff out your chest a little bit and don't worry quite so much. It'll be fine. You're a man after all.

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ByMatt Jones

How to have sex

The Red Dress

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I was a late developer in regards to sex, losing my virginity aged 18. This may not seem spectacularly late - though try telling that to my left-leaning Parisian girlfriend, who started reading Voltaire aged nine and smoking shortly after - but if, like I did, you went to a private school in Surrey, co-ed at that, where most weekends were spent buying a 'teenth of weed between ten friends, drinking peach schnapps in a pub car park and having sex - or not - in the back of a lowered Ford Fiesta with tinted windows, then if you hadn't lost your virginity before you failed your A levels you must be weird. Or gay.

I was neither as it turned out. Well, certainly not gay, despite my mother's longing for a "trendy" gay son. (It was the Nineties. Homosexuality was about as cool as a John Pawson-designed Southwark loft.) Still, going to university without having done the deed meant I was petrified I'd be found out as a wimpy, sexless, dickless virgin. To girls, I may as well be Action Man down there. Or worse, Duncan Goodhew. The only thing that separated myself and a primary school child was my driving licence.

My solution, I reckoned, was to get sex over with as quickly as possible either with someone I didn't know or someone so drunk that they wouldn't remember what a terrible shag I was. Who needs love when you've got subsidised pints on tap and half an E? About three weeks into the first semester at university I found Melissa - this probably wasn't her name by the way - a blonde second-year student who was as paralytic as I was one night at the student union disco. Amazingly, she was also due to head back to her home city of Columbus, Ohio in two weeks. Bingo! The perfect person with whom to lose my ripe virginity - anonymously.

I don't remember much about that night, bouncing up and down like a malfunctioning fork lift on my steel-framed single bed, except two things: I had to knock on my neighbour's door for a condom in just my Ralph Lauren polo shirt, nothing else (ie how friends' dads always seem to sleep when you're a teenager); and, secondly, it was about as enjoyable as eating a really nice biscuit.

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ByTony Parsons

Not like a Bourbon, no way, but something like a Garibaldi. Or watching a half-decent Keanu Reeves movie. Nothing as good as Speed, not that mind-blowingly liberating. Maybe more The Devil's Advocate? That sort of size of cultural moment. You'll remember it, but you couldn't put your finger on one standout performance. I'm sure Melissa would say the same.

Since that first damp squib I've done a bit more humping of course. I've even done it and enjoyed it. I've certainly got better; well, I should hope so. But what I've come to realise after 20 odd years of screwing and f***ing, sucking and squelching, sometimes with my socks off, is that I needn't have worried so much that first night.

Essentially, unless you're Warren Beatty or you work as a human sperm donor in Putin's clandestine stud-farm building the next Russian super race, then most people don't know what the hell they are doing under the sheets either. They'll tell you they do, that it's all about pushing here or pulling there but that is, quite fittingly, a load of old bollocks. Yes, practice will make you a little more nuanced, experience will teach you a few tricks, confidence will give you some patience when going down on a loved one for what seems like days, but overall, sex is, well, sex: naked people either trying to make a baby or trying to get the other person to go to sleep. Well, unless you're having an affair with your PA, in which case you've got real problems, pal. So relax, my well-hung friends. Go forth and fiddle like the perverts you all are. But make it a quickie, because, frankly, I'm knackered.

How to go out

The Red Dress

Remember when a night out went on for a month? In your twenties you went out on the Friday before a bank holiday and wouldn't come home until Monday. You'd fall into the bath, stinking of bins, your jean pockets full of white powder and a couple of crushed pills that, more likely than not, were vitamin C. Things are different for me now, of course. I have children. I have a dog with one lame leg. I have a shed. I can't disappear in a bacchanalian haze for days on end. Who would walk Boris? Who would tune the radio to the Today programme every morning or take the rubbish out on a Sunday evening? No, my days of partying like Bowie in '75 are well and truly numbered. Well, until Glastonbury. In a way, it's a relief. All that debauchery is exhausting.

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How to deal with regrets as a man

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ByJustin Myers, The Guyliner

But what I do believe is men need to congregate with other men. To drink. To talk. To remember what it means to be a man. Of course, you don't need to go out and not come home for three days. Not every weekend needs to resemble a stag do. Join a book club if that's your thing. The truth is, I never felt guilty about my nights out. And I've never had a comedown. Not once. That's why I liked it. I remember speaking to friends on a Wednesday after a particularly messy weekend and some of my male cohort would email to say how "ruined" they were. I could never understand this. Sure, I've felt a little wobbly and would at times burst into tears if I overheard Coldplay's "Fix You". But I never felt depressed.

To me, the idea of a comedown is the ultimate slacker's excuse. The ultimate insult to 2,000 years of male evolution. Jesus, Leonardo da Vinci, Bowie, Terry Wogan and now Prince - these great men didn't die for you to sulk about drinking one too many vodka Red Bulls. Not only have you wasted an entire weekend banjoing about - first at a pub, then a club, then someone's flat, then god knows where - but now you're moaning about it. This may sound like pure chest-thumping machismo, but it needs to be said: if you can't hack it, stay in. Watch a movie - with friends. Knit - with friends. Go shopping - with friends. Masturbate - with...

Social engagement - and I don't just mean Twitter - for men is crucial to our wellbeing. It's the marrow, the glue that stops us all turning into brainless muscles with bank accounts carrying brushed-steel coffee cups and oversized tablets. Those lost days and nights I spent bonding with my fellow man during my twenties and early thirties are part of what has made my life worth living, part of my own evolution, part of being a man. But it's not for everyone. I hear The Sopranos is excellent.

How to get the body you deserve

The Red Dress

I used to worry about my weight like a whippet worries about being stepped on: with a neurotic skittishness. I've always been skinny, mainly because between the ages of six and 13, I pretty much only ate uncooked tomatoes. Before I managed to put on any weight whatsoever, around sixth form, my body resembled the graveyard of a Chinese takeaway - broken chopsticks and tissue paper. To me, Flat Stanley was less like whimsical bedtime reading and more a preview of my own autobiography. My mother used to grip on to my arm in the park on Saturdays, terrified a strong gust of wind might blow me into the pond.

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A good man knows he has to do more

Boys will be boys is no excuse. Have you been a good man?

ByJustin Myers, The Guyliner

I was only six when Bob Geldof organised the mass sing-along at Wembley in 1985 to raise money for the millions of starving Ethiopians, but for years afterwards my brother, a year-and-a-half older and somewhat stockier, used to tease me that The Boomtown Rats singer had started Band Aid with my lanky frame in mind. If he was stuck for an insult, or if I was too far away for him to punch me in the arm, he would simply sing, "Feeeeeed the wooooorld" at me, grinning inanely while pushing another packet of Monster Munch in my general direction. Brothers have a habit of always knowing what not to say.

Was I bullied about it? Not really. Did it consume me? Not like some men I know. But it did preoccupy my adolescent thoughts daily and it did make me less confident physically, both on the sports field and, eventually, when it came to sex. I just felt like less of a man, less virile than my bulky, ripped friends who could bench-press the equivalent of two Labradors in the school gym.

Young men today worry about body image as much as women, yet we hardly ever talk about it. For men between the ages of 18 and 35, going to the gym is not about keeping fit or being healthy so much as about looking hot. As men become the stars of their own reality shows - via navel-gazing social media channels - never before have we been so conscious of the way we look. You only have to look at David Beckham in comparison to someone like Cristiano Ronaldo to see that self-serving, obsessive narcissism has broken all previous records.

In the past two years, however, there has been a backlash against all the pumping and straining. After all, who really wants arms so thick you take up three seats on the tube? Cue: the dad bod. Writing for her student newspaper in 2015, Mackenzie Pearson proclaimed her love for men with softer underbellies: "The dad bod says, 'I go to the gym occasionally, but I also drink heavily on the weekends,'" Pearson wrote, "and enjoy eating eight slices of pizza at a time."

The gist of Pearson's piece was this: men with big bellies turn women like me on because their weight makes me less guilty about being so fat. The article was picked up and shared thousands of times, with women, and some men, proclaiming it a win against the selfie-taking gym fiends intent on making the normal guy with a bit of a gut look like Homer Simpson.

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ByEleanor Halls

Again this isn't quite right; dad bod may be more of a legitimate trend than spornosexuality but this is even more worrying. Men don't want to look like Homer Simpson any more than they want to look like Dwayne Johnson. I certainly don't. And to say having a beer gut is sexy when health stats prove time and time again that men with a spare tire are more likely to be depressed, suffer from heart disease, have less energy and have less sex, can't be, well, healthy.

What most men want is to live long enough to see their children buy their first property (not in London; that's about as likely as living to 208) and to look good enough in swimming trunks that your partner doesn't immediately think of the blood-soaked deck of a Japanese whaling ship when you strip off to take a plunge in the frothy Caribbean surf.

Men, listen up: despite what an industry worth trillions will tell you, a decent level of body confidence and health is not difficult to achieve. Run a bit. Swim a bit. Cycle a bit. Eat lots of green stuff (Tangfastics don't count). Stop with the venti lattes - not even a newborn baby needs that much milk after 5pm - and halt the bottle of Malbec on a slow Tuesday evening. If that doesn't stop you gaining weight invest in smaller dinner plates. Remember: a lack of self-control is not a disease, it is an excuse.

How to be a father

The Red Dress

Perhaps because I was raised by a divorced mother of two boys, I presumed that being a father, at least a good father, was much like being a good mother - I had no other reference points. "Dad" for me was Hannibal Smith. Or Michael Knight. I was, of course, wrong. In 2016 I have two children, one four years old and one four months, and I love them like other men love football or Breaking Bad, but there is one particular five-minute encounter that illuminated my idea of what a father should be more than any other moment thus far.

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Why you should never act your age

Your age is a number, only ever going up, up, up – but rather than break you, let it take your spirit with it, and soar.

ByJustin Myers, The Guyliner

When my eldest daughter was around a year old we went to buy her a new pair of shoes at a really expensive shop in Hampstead, partly because we live nearby, but more because when you're a precocious know-it-all new dad you swear to yourself, "There's no way my little tinkle pie is going to run around in a pair of ugly, faux-leather, brown Velcro monstrosities from f***ing Clarks like I used to!"

Consequentially, there was another youngish father and his daughter, both similar ages to me and my girl, in the shop at the same time. The new dad was whizzing about pretending to be an aeroplane, making lots of ridiculous noises, haranguing the sales assistant for not having the exact hue of fuchsia pink that his little bratty princess demanded, and generally gurning like a total idiot. All the while his child sat and spat orders like a fat serpent in a tutu. My own daughter's mother, who was with us, turned to me and said, "Yuk. That sort of behaviour by a man is so unattractive."

I was stunned. What? What did she mean? That men shouldn't get all geed up about buying their daughter shiny new shoes? Well, in a way, no, they shouldn't. In France, they have a nickname for overly attentive new fathers. They call them "Papa Poule", which roughly translates as "Daddy Hen".

I get called Papa Poule a great deal in our household. It is not meant as a compliment. Before my first daughter turned three I was her shadow, her support vehicle, her spirit animal. Frankly, her poor mother didn't get a look in. My sense of custody rose to Gollum levels of possession, so much so that I even loathed grandparents coming round. "She's mine," I creeped. "I know best! Leave her alone!" It took me a long time to realise that in order for her to learn I needed to leave her alone. Let her get on with life. Stop helicoptering over my child like some sort of obsessive-compulsive tiger mum. Less Papa Poule, more Papa Poubelle.

This doesn't mean ignoring them entirely. Yes, get them tennis lessons. Sure, do their maths homework for them occasionally. But let them get bored. Put away the screens for a few weeks. Don't make them learn the clarinet then continue to tell them how gifted they are, even when the cat has moved out and all the neighbours are threatening to go to the council about the sound pollution. Be honest with them. Talk to them about sex. Talk to them about how they will die if they take up smoking. Show them photographs of your grandfather's tar-blackened lungs. Take them round the cancer wards at the local hospital. Let them cry. Then, when they are old enough, let them come to their own decisions about life. You know, so long as they are the right ones.

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How to not kill yourself

The Red Dress

"I don't need to go and see a therapist," I used to think. "What do you think I am, crazy?" That was in my twenties. And then three things happened in the space of eight years.

Violent episode No1: seven armed men wearing ski masks walked into my bedroom at 3am while I slept, woke me, and then one of them put a sawn-off shotgun to my temple. They then proceeded to loot my flat without saying a single word. Violent episode No2: my dog and I got attacked by a pit bull on Kentish Town high street. I had to pull Boris' near-severed hind leg (the size of a small jamón ibérico, since you're wondering) out of the other animal's jaws with my own hands. (I can now confirm that uncooked minced dog meat is light grey in colour, much like a pack of refrigerated Sainsbury's chicken fillets.) Violent episode No3: my brother was hit from behind by a black cab while on a push bike on his way back from Richmond Park. He was left for dead. I walked into the hospital and saw my brother's ear in a bin next to his bed. I have only ever nearly fainted twice. Once after trying poppers for the first time aged 14. And then, in the foyer of Hammersmith Hospital A&E department.

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These violent episodes have affected me in numerous ways: lost income, self-harm, self-medication, anxiety, depression, insomnia, loss of property, friendships, relationships... Oh, and my favourite pair of Acne jeans. (Dog blood is a bitch to get out in the wash.) Don't worry, I'm over it now. But what bugs me is not the impact these extraordinary, life shuddering moments had on me psychologically - this, in hindsight, is fairly unsurprising - but the realisation that so much of the shock could have been cushioned had I done one thing: talk to someone. Men must talk more. It doesn't need to be a therapist - though they're good at it; it is what they're paid to do - it could be your barber, a brother, a friend, a colleague. Just so long as you can unravel that messed-up mental spool and begin to reprogramme.

Preoccupied by thoughts that your boss gave you a funny look and will shortly fire you? Talk to someone. Got a problem with pornography? Talk to someone. Feel like a drink at 10am most Wednesday mornings? Talk to someone. Spend your lunchtimes masturbating to Dan Bilzerian's Instagram feed rather than going with everyone else to Pret? Talk to someone. (Just maybe not human resources about that last one.) Balls ache more than usual? Talk. To. Someone. Silence is golden only in a library. Or when you're dead. And you can do all the reading you want there. PS: if none of this works I'll shoot you myself.